Anglian Glaciation

The Anglian Glaciation started around 480,000BP (years before present). With ice up to 1000m (3300 ft) thick that reached as far south as London and Bristol it was the greatest glaciation that Britain experienced during the Pleistocene. Some geologists believe that the change from warm to cold periods can take as little as 50 to 100 years.

Throughout most of Britain, all but the highest hills lay beneath a thick sheet of ice grinding slowly south, eroding massive quantities of rock, such that up to 363 cubic metres of the chalk of Lincolnshire and Norfolk was spread to the southwest over much of the Midlands and to the southeast over Essex. Erosion depths in Eastern England of up to 70m occurred in some places and in Suffolk similar depths of deposits were left behind. Isolated boulders were left as ‘erratics’ in the glacial tills and meltwater gravels spread across large parts of the country.

This profound erosion was accompanied by large changes in the courses of rivers. The Anglian glaciation covered and destroyed both the Bytham and Mathon Rivers, and diverted the Thames nearly 100 miles south to somewhere near its modern course. Following the retreat of the Anglian ice sheets the landscape of southern Britain took on much of its present form, with the establishment of familiar river such as, in the Midlands, the River Severn.

During the Anglian grasses and sedges dominated the flora beyond the edges of the ice sheet. A ground squirrel (Spermophilus sp), Norway Lemming (Lemmus lemmus), horse (Equus sp.), Reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) and Red Deer (Cervus elaphus) have been recorded.

Reindeer